Stephen Jackson's ADM Blog (79)

The social media snowball continues to gather momentum. Within the last two years, Facebook has acquired photo sharing capabilities, facial recognition software, speech translation apps, mobile instant messaging, and (most…

One of J.D. Rucker’s outstanding blog postscame across my desk the other day and fueled lots of discussion in the ActivEngage offices. J.D. says that he sees way too many chat providers asking for lead info right off the bat - and we’ve found that this is one of the most destructive things you could do in a conversation. Asking for contact…

If you’ve been above ground at any point during the past week, you probably heard about Facebook’s staggering$19 billion acquisition of private messaging service What’sApp. Last Wednesday, Mark Zuckerburg bought his most expensive Facebook friend - the largest Internet deal in …

I love marketing - it’s full of little mind games. Chevy’s reintroduction of the “Stingray” model name got us thinking about how OEMs come up with the names for different vehicle models. What kinds of considerations went into naming the Silverado, or Versa, or Camry? Why are luxury vehicles usually given names that resemble alphabet soup (like the IS300, 328i, or MDX)? It…

I buy most of the stuff I wear from a Canadian clothier called Frank and Oak, a company that lets me choose three new items each month and send back the ones I don’t need, free of shipping costs. It is subscription fashion, offering style for the lazy. The clothes are inexpensive but well-made, and usually the hard part is picking only three things. But…

As a marketer, I’ve got my eye on two battles at this Sunday’s Super Bowl. Of course, there’s the action on the field - Super Bowl XLVII, a gladiatorial war waged between mountainous men in an arctic Jersey winter. A clash between Seattle’s young talent and Peyton Manning’s legacy. Many Americans care about this game, and they are called “gamblers.”

BREAKING NEWS: JUSTIN BIEBER HAS BEEN ARRESTED FOR - Just kidding, no one cares. Let’s talk about the stories that matter. You might not have had time to catch the top new posts this week - so ActivEngage saved them for you. This week, Netflix bares its teeth at Internet service providers, a deep space probe speaks to Earthlings, and new crash test data which shows smaller isn’t safer.

ActivEngage’s good friend Jeff Kershner wrote a DealerRefresh post way back in 2008 called The ROI of an NADA Booth Model. Hilarious and creative, the blog is half mathematical formula for determining your “booth model conversion ratio” and half love note to a vAuto model named Andrea. We love Jeff’s style.

ActivEngage is all about innovation - we’re constantly learning more about our dealer partners and internet trends to maintain our reputation as the most trusted brand in live chat. And innovation is the theme this week - in the past few days, Google bought an army of robots, China landed a rover on the moon, and windshield wiper technology is now obsolete. Read on for…

In the 1954 classic text, How to Lie With Statistics, author Darrell Huff asserts that there are hundreds of ways that numbers can lie to you. Statistical interpretation is a subjective business - trends and correlation can be employed by the statistician to support pretty much any hypothesis. Graphs and charts can distort reality. Ratios and proportions can be meaningless comparisons. What we might think as…

Is your managed live chat solution everything you were promised? Maybe you were sold on the lofty ideal of unprecedented customer service (not mention the huge boost in leads). You loved the idea of making contact with your customers when they are first researching their next vehicle. But after a few months, you’ve noticed that you’re just not happy with the conversations that your outsourced chatters are having on your behalf. Not to mention the leads aren’t exactly flowing in,…

ActivEngage has made perfecting your website easier than ever. With our free newActivEyeMap tool, we can help you find simple ways to improve your dealership’s onlineusability. This technology has already enabled us to help auto dealers make alterations to their sites that get more shoppers into your inventory and planning their next vehicle. Even the…

What matters most to your car shoppers? Is it price? Depth of inventory? Maybe – but the Internet has nearly commoditized the auto business. Savvy customers will be able to find the car they want at the lowest price within a few seconds of searching. So where is the competitive edge that draws a…

Today we’ve decided to feature a great blog by Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, about why you should pay your employees to use social media on company time. Sounds crazy? Maybe. But according to Holmes, social media is not a…

In ActivEngage’s 5 years of operation, we’ve collected a whole lot of data about the buying habits of online shoppers. We use this data to keep our eyes on the big picture, and we’ve noticed a startling trend: More web shoppers are active early in the…

The most trusted name in live chat brings the top ten blogs and auto news stories right to you! We monitor industry trends, current events, and the auto dealer community every week to bring you the top ten blogs…

Still haunted by the ghost of the 14 million vehicles recalled for faulty floor mats and brake pedals, Japanese automaker Toyota Motors announced today that it would be recalling another 3 million cars – including 67,000 Prius models – due to a defect in…

Korean rapper/insane man PSY is having a pretty good month. His smash hit, “Gangnam Style,” has become the viral version of the Macarena, coupling a catchy beat with the most ridiculous dance moves that a fully grown adult could conceivably perform. Mimicking and mocking the music video is irresistible…

Last Sunday, ActivEngage celebrated its 5th-year anniversary under the cabanas of Wekiva Island in sunny Florida. We count ourselves lucky – 95% of all businesses fail before they turn 5! To commemorate the occasion, ActivEngage pulled out all…

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